Excellent day for hitting the pavement as Excelsior hosts Sunday Streets

Updated 9:16 pm, Sunday, September 28, 2014

Jessica Wang smiled as she tapped her feet to dance music and her 5-year-old son, Nelson, weaved through the crowd on his bicycle with enough expertise to make one wonder why he even had training wheels.

“I think this is good for the neighborhood, and it’s great to see all these people here,” said Wang, 26, as she watched her son ride around the middle of Mission Street with dozens of other children during the Sunday Streets festival, which is designed to highlight the Excelsior district and draw the multicultural neighborhood together.

A mile-long stretch of Mission Street was closed to cars Sunday for the event, sponsored by Livable City, a San Francisco sustainable transportation advocacy organization. Wang and her son were two of as many as 12,000 pedestrians, bikers and skateboarders who strolled and rolled along what is normally a car-choked section of Mission between Geneva and Avalon.

“The neighborhood is safe,” Wang said, with a tinge of surprise in her voice. “We’re going to walk the whole way.”

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The Excelsior festival was the 52nd event held by Sunday Streets, which was started in 2008 as an attempt by then Mayor Gavin Newsom to combat the obesity epidemic. The idea is to open up neighborhoods with few parks or open space and get residents bicycling, walking and enjoying the outdoors, said Scott Reinstein, the development and communications director for Livable City.

“We have research that shows that when you provide people with access to open space and physical activity, it not only gets them more involved in their community, but it is connected with a reduction in crime,” said Reinstein, who said organizers were inspired by a similar program in Bogota, Colombia, that started in the 1970s and has been credited with reducing crime, not to mention traffic, on the 70 miles of streets that are open to pedestrians every Sunday and holiday.

“In the Excelsior, you have a lot of first-generation Americans, primarily Filipino, Chinese and Latino,” he said. “They may not have incorporated active living into their lives either because they don’t know the city very well or they lack access or because they are working a lot. We are providing them with open space for a day and a chance to connect with their neighborhood.”

So far this year, 21 miles of San Francisco streets have been closed off to cars on nine Sundays in neighborhoods as diverse as the Bayview and Richmond districts to the Tenderloin and Great Highway, he said.

Healthy living was a major theme Sunday, with yoga lessons, bicycle repair and bicycle advocacy booths lining the street. The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition was offering test rides for children. Skateboarders rolled by as children and adults danced to everything from salsa to rock ’n’ roll.

Meanwhile, local markets and shops sold their wares, including a loan and check-cashing business and a not-so-healthy smoke shop. Raiders and 49er fans crowded into Pissed Off Pete’s to drink beer and root for their teams.

Guilio Sorro, a 39-year-old teacher at nearby June Jordan High School, said street fairs like this one strengthen the community.

“It celebrates the diversity of the Excelsior and gets people out of their houses onto the street and brings smiles to their faces,” said Sorro, a third-generation resident of the neighborhood. “This also exposes the rest of the city to the diversity, the heritage of this neighborhood. We need to keep that balance here and support the working-class families that have lived here for generations.”

Sorro looked around as about a dozen children frolicked in the middle of the street.

“I see children out, and I love it,” he said. “This is a beautiful thing.”

The last Sunday Streets event of the year is scheduled for Oct. 19 in the Mission.